Guides
Practical answers for founders and executives on fractional CTOs, technical due diligence, AI readiness, and building vs buying LLM features.
Fractional vs full-time CTO: which one do you need?
You need a full-time CTO when technology is your product and you need someone leading the engineering team, the architecture, and the technical decisions every day. A fractional CTO fits when you need senior judgment for a specific stretch, such as preparing for a raise, rescuing a stalled project, making your first hires, or planning a modernization, but not yet a full-time executive. Many companies use a fractional CTO first and then hire the permanent one with that person’s help.
How do you prepare for technical due diligence?
You prepare for technical due diligence by running an honest review of your own technology before anyone else does: architecture, code, security, team, IP, costs and roadmap. Assemble the documents reviewers will ask for, find the weak spots, and write down a plan for each one. Reviewers rarely expect a perfect system; they expect you to know where the problems are and to have a credible plan to fix them.
What is an AI readiness assessment, and do you need one?
An AI readiness assessment is a short, structured review of your goals, data, technology, team, governance and delivery habits that ends in a ranked list of AI use cases and a plan to deliver the first ones. You need one when you are about to spend real money on AI and cannot yet say which use case comes first, whether your data supports it, or how you would know it worked. If you already have a clear, low-risk use case and an owner, skip the assessment and run a small pilot.
Should you build or buy LLM features?
Buy when the use case is common to many companies and a product already does it well enough; build when the feature is part of what makes your product different, or when it needs deep access to your own data and systems. Most companies end up with a mix: they buy for internal productivity and build where the LLM feature touches customers or core workflows. Decide per use case, not once for the whole company.